Mobile publishing and marketing provider Netbiscuits today published its latest Mobile Metrics Report in which it details the continued problem of mass fragmentation with smartphones, in addition to the lack of HTML5 adoption despite the recent hype.
The company says it processes more than 8.5 billion mobile pages and content items through its platform each month, and said that between November of 2009 and May of 2011, they averaged 2,872 unique devices requesting mobile sites through its platform. Of these devices, a total of 10 operating system were analyzed including iOS, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Bada, Windows Phone, Windows Mobile, WebOS, PalmOS and MeeGo. Though Android and iOS hold the lion’s share, fragmentation is still a major issue, especially in terms of developing mobile applications for specific platforms.
Things like having various OS versions in the market at the same time, and having various hardware and form factors of devices running the same OS make it extremely difficult to develop and deploy native mobile applications cross-platform. For these very reasons the argument for HTML5 Web apps has gotten more relevant, but as Netbiscuits details in its report, the adoption of HTML5 is matching its hype.
In looking at the proliferation of HTML5 features on smartphones, the company found that no more than four standard HTML5 features (out of 17) are supported by the majority of the top selling mobile devices, meaning that all the features and capabilities that got people excited about HTML5 aren’t even supported on a large scale just yet.
For much more information, data and visual elements, head on over and download the full 31-page report for yourself. It’s an extremely detailed report that takes a deep dive into mobile fragmentation and HTML5 support.